Consumers Won't Shop with Breached Firms – Report

Almost two-thirds of global consumers won’t shop with a brand that has suffered a data breach, with over half believing their personal details have a higher chance of being stolen during the Christmas shopping season, according to Gemalto.

The bad news for retailers with a poor handle on security is that they’re likely to lose 64% of potential customers if they suffer a data breach where financial information is stolen.

A slightly smaller number–49%–claimed they’d feel the same way if a breach exposed their personal information.

The current busy shopping season is a particularly nervous time for these shoppers—59% said they felt the threat to their personal information was greater in the run-up to Christmas, while 18% believe they’ll actually become a breach victim during this period.

Only a quarter said they thought companies take the protection of their data seriously.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority (69%) believe it is the organization’s responsibility to secure their data rather than their own (31%).

In a wake-up call to companies that don’t pay close enough attention to customer data security, around a quarter of respondents (23%) who have been the victim of a breach claimed they’d consider legal action against the company.

If this year follows the same pattern as 2014, those respondents to the Gemalto survey could well be right when it comes to festive season cyber attacks.

Payment processor Worldpay claimed earlier this year that customer data is often harvested at around this time, when retailers are distracted by the push to maximize sales.

Worldpay head of payment security, Tim Lansdale said at the time that these details are then used by fraudsters in the new year.

“We see a dip in fraud around Christmas as hackers go on the hunt for information, using the online sales rush to stockpile thousands of customer card details,” he explained. “It isn’t until February that they start cashing in on all the data they’ve collected.”